Concept: a post-apoc survival game where the premise is that the previous batch of heroes stopped one of those allegorical JRPG-style apocalypses, but the physical consequences didn’t magically undo themselves afterwards, so now everyone has to to deal with symbolic bullshit like your agricultural land being replaced with forests of stone hands, or that giant eyeball where your capital city used to be. The tone could be horror, but it’s not; rather, the emphasis is on how incredibly inconvenient it is for everybody that pieces of the world have been transformed into half-baked metaphors for hating your dad.
Please let me have something like this set in ff6’s World of Ruin
Kefka was demented and he had an entire year to fuck things up as a god
yessssssssss
There needs to be a term for this incredibly specific (sub?)genre that is exemplified in stuff like Oglaf and this post
Being as Oglaf is basically just old-school D&D as played by moderately drunk college students (like, it’s not even a parody of old-school D&D; that’s literally what it’s like), the term you’re probably looking for is “owlbear fantasy”.
Distinguishing traits of owlbear fantasy as a genre include:
A bewildering variety of fantastic and ecologically improbable monsters, most of which are intelligent and capable of speech, even and perhaps especially the ones you wouldn’t expect to be much for conversation
Awe-inspiring supernatural marvels being treated as mundane and somewhat annoying by the setting’s inhabitants
The preceding two points being justified by an apocalyptic event in the distant past where a great empire made a big mistake and blew up the world; probably it’s the elves’ fault
The presence of “adventurer” as an established – if not necessarily respectable – profession, complete with its own trade guilds or other institutions
Magic is a vocational skill that any idiot can learn; the primary brake on its influence isn’t that it requires a special bloodline or exacts a great cost, but that it’s incredibly inconvenient to use
Enchanted items have a high chance of carrying oddly specific curses, possessing an intelligence that enjoys fucking with their wielder, or both
Protagonists tend to have extremely eclectic backgrounds; if a robot, a werewolf and a dragon-man walk into a bar, someone will probably give them a quest
The setting’s mundane inhabitants tend to be incongruously well-educated for their station, and are generally huge pedants, prepared to have a nitpicking debate over irrelevant bullshit at the drop of a hat
Though the threat of violence is omnipresent, actually fighting things is treated as something of a failure state, with dangerous confrontations generally resolved by trickery or complicated legalistic arguments
Dick jokes; lots and lots of dick jokes
Though the genre’s name is taken from Dungeons & Dragons (and its most iconic monster), the milieu is by no means limited to tabletop RPGs – D&D mostly just codified a set of tropes that were already present in late 1960s/early 1970s sword and sorcery fiction.
I kind of feel like that list is more-or-less describing Adventure Time…
Adventure Time isn’t even slightly subtle about the fact that it’s basically a cartoon adaptation of Pendleton Ward’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Its title banner even visually name-checks the logo that D&D was using at the time the show’s pilot aired. Compare:
Some of my favourite moments from the day I spent at the library playing Snape for their Harry Potter event
•”The real Snape is taller than you!”
“Real Snape? Oh, you mean the muggle who played me in that film? His name was Alan. My name is not Alan, and I am sadly not 6’1”. Ten points from Gryffindor.”
•*to a little girl dressed as Hedwig complete with mask* “You’re that Potter brat’s owl, arent you? Hedwig, correct?”
“Yeah! You’re so mean to Harry! *pretends to peck at me my god she was adorable*
“See, I’d put you in detention for that, but regrettably you can’t put owls in detention. So I’ll put your mother in detention instead for raising such a disrespectful child.” *the mother cracked up at this*
•”Are you Professor Snape?”
“*long sigh* Regrettably.”
•I had a belt of potions bottles and a group of kids asked me what potions I had, so I actually gave an impromptu potions lesson. Some of the highlights included threatening to use Skele-Gro on a boy dressed as Harry who wouldn’t stop interrupting, and loudly complaining to their parents that I wouldn’t have had to waste time reteaching this lesson if their kids had paid attention the first time.
•Word got out that I actually had the dark mark on my arm so kids kept coming up to ask to see it. I made a big show of rolling my eyes and threatening them and then finally rolling up sleeve while flexing the tendons in my wrist to make the snake move. Made several kids scream. It was hilarious
•There were a couple teenagers in a group with a Luna and her friend dressed as her rabbit patronus. I had a lot of fun with them giving her a hard time:
-“Lovegood. I know that name. Why do I—ah, yes, your father.”
“He writes for the Quibbler!”
“Indeed he does. Penned an article claiming Hogwarts had a vampire teaching there. Can’t imagine to whom he was referring.” *cue biggest laugh of the evening*
-“Lovegood, if you melt on more pewter cauldron—“
“They had dark magic in them! All pewter cauldrons do!” (She was really good)
“…you’re telling me every pewter cauldron was made by a dark wizard? He must have been extraordinarily busy” *dry tone*
“Yes, and it explains why you’re the way you are. Spent too much time with pewter cauldrons”
“…why am I still talking to you, Lovegood?”
•”Why arent you at Hogwarts?”
“Have you been outside, child? It’s summer.”
•*parents who wanted photos* “Can we get our picture/their picture with you?”
“…*sigh* Fine. *dramatic eye roll* You do know I’m the villain for like six and three-fourths of seven books, right?” (They found this hilarious)
•The classic, “I love your costume/great costume!” comments followed up with “…What costume?”
•There was a sorting station I helped back up for a bit and I had way too much fun loudly groaning and complaining when kids were put into Gryffindor.
•One little girl was put into Slytherin so I introduced myself to her and her dad and was all “You’d better make me proud. Although honestly after 14 years my expectations aren’t very high so that should be relatively easy.” Went over her head but the dad lost it
•*two rowdy little boys nearly putting each other’s eyes out with fake wands and in general causing dangerous commotion* “No duelling in the halls. Twenty points each from both your houses, and a week’s detentions.” (They straightened up immediately. Was proud.)
•There was a station where kids could make Pygmy puffs out of cotton balls and glue and one kid made an all black one and proudly presented it to me with “I tried to make it look grumpy”
That is spot on and so wonderful! Share you Snapeing secrets…
hi i’m kitty i don’t know anything about star wars whoops
“What am I looking at?”
Lando leaned forward and laced his fingers together. “My taxes.” He paused, then gestured to Han. “Our taxes,” he corrected, with an unnecessarily rakish grin.
Leia squinted at the datapad. “Tax fraud.”
“Oh, no no no. Absolutely not. My accounting is impeccable.”
“I don’t see how it could be,” she said. “He’s a smuggler.”
“Hey,” Han began. He shut his mouth when Leia leveled him with a look. He opened it again to persist, but saw that Lando had a shit-eating grin as he watched their argument-in-potentia. Han glowered at Lando, and made him grin wider. Han huffed, hooking his thumbs on his belt.
“Legally, he’s a long-haul transport navigator,” Lando said, and Leia snorted. “Because he has a spouse at home—me—he qualifies for a higher income deduction as well as a few credits unique to the profession.”
“Wait, credits?” Han asked.
“Because he’s my dependent,” Lando continued, ignoring him.
“The hell I am.”
“That puts me in a unique legal position—not many people know about this, but in order to incentivize long-haul transportation, a spouse who claims a long-haul transport navigator as a dependent qualifies as a household caretaker, which is a kind of head of household that’s able to claim significantly more not only for themselves but for any other dependent spouses they may happen to have.”
“But his transport isn’t legal,” Leia said, fascinated. Han was pretending to understand the conversation, which would have been more convincing if he weren’t already fiddling with a kinetic sculpture on one of Lando’s shelves.
“It’s art.”
“What?”
“As far as my taxes are concerned,” Lando said, “Han transports art. They can’t prove that it isn’t. And I’m always careful to get the valuation right.”
“How do you know what I transport?” Han asked, indignant. A piece came off the sculpture in his hands. He looked down at it, then looked at Lando. He made a hasty attempt to reattach the piece. The entire sculpture collapsed. Han took his hands from it, and attempted to lean casually against the shelves with his elbow to block it from view.
“They call me,” Lando said.
“No,” Leia gasped, delighted.
“Yes,” Lando said, grinning again. “They know I’m his partner. They know I can’t be sure I’m getting my fair share unless I know exactly what he’s getting. So they call me.”
“What!” Han stood straighter, his brow furrowed and his face all twisted into an incredulous pout of anger.
“They might have been able to catch him smuggling,” Lando said to Leia, still not addressing Han.
“They would never,” Han sneered.
“But they’re never going to get him on tax evasion. There’s no way he would have been paying taxes on his own.”
“It never even occurred to me that he would,” Leia said.
“I’m right here,” Han reminded them.
“So you can see why I can’t divorce him,” Lando said.
“I don’t follow,” Leia said.
“My household caretaker status is the foundation of all of this,” he said, pointing to the datapad. “I divorce Han and the whole thing collapses.”
“Collapses how?” Leia asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Cloud City goes bankrupt.”
Han choked.
“How many people have you married?” Leia demanded.
“Leia, you know that you’re my favorite wife-in-law,” Lando said, “but I don’t think I’m comfortable discussing that aspect of my personal life.”
The pile of former-sculpture slid from the shelf, and clattered to the floor.
The Boku No Hero Academia “The Two Heroes” movie special manga booklet comes with a one shot story about how All Might becomes “All Might” and how Nana passed on her legacy to him. I scanlated the entire story, so I hope you enjoy! Also, you can purchase the Vol. 0 Origin Manga here! Please credit me or my Twitter @aitaikimochii if you post these scanlations elsewhere! Enjoy~
Plot Designing 